Depuration
by Ersatz.Love
Summary: The purest of gold is only obtained through the hottest of fires; the only question is whether or not Sho can stand the heat. Pre-game, Sho-centric; spoilers, dark themes.
1. Talking to God

A/N: HI GAIZ!

I wanted to delve into Sho's past some and try to figure out what exactly made him the way he is by the time you meet him in the game. Symbolism and kinda vague events abound! I'll try to make everything clear by the end, though. And don't worry -- I haven't forgotten about Dividing by Zero or my other fics. My muses just seem to want to do something a little different (uncooperative little bastards they are), so I hope this will suffice in the meantime. Thanks for keeping up with my stuff, guys. Y'all are the best!

SO! READY FOR A DEPRESSING STORY? _**YOU BET YOU ARE.**_

In all seriousness though this story is going to get hella depressing hella fast. It's gonna have some dark themes and some kinda disturbing stuff later on that won't set well with you unless you're a Nobody. Just a warning. It's rated M for a reason.

Enjoy!

~*~

He was dreaming. He had to be.

He had never seen so many seagulls in his life. Blinking slowly, he raised a hand over his face when the cloud of seagulls dissipated, leaving only the scorching sun above to shine down into those too-light amber eyes. He sat up and glanced around. Mountains of junk surrounded him from every direction, stretching out as far as he could see, except to the south. To the south he saw the ocean, lit afire by the blazing sun.

He stood. Seagulls keened overhead, seeking leftover scraps in the hills of the wasteland. Some of them were flying towards the ocean; he followed them. Stumbling through materialism's graveyard, he walked for what seemed like an eternity, not noticing the sea getting closer until it was just in front of him. He stared at the waters and at the image reflected back to him.

It was a lion.

_You seem to think the world is only what's behind you._

He blinked and turned around, but saw no one; only the infinite stretch of garbage, reaching up into the bleak gray sky.

_But it's like the ocean, right? Beautiful – stormy at times, but ever-changing, ever-moving, just like life._

He looked to the waters again. They seemed closer. Reaching out, he touched the surface with his hand, watching the tiny ripples spread out and then fade as bigger waves dominated them. His reflection flickered, briefly disappearing to reveal the dark murkiness beneath.

_You can't change the ocean, you know. Like life itself, no one can really master it._

He pursed his lips in thought, then scowled, splashing the image of the lion. He peered into the brown waters and saw the reason for their murk; the trash behind him was beginning to fall into the ocean, turning it to a filthy soup of grime, rust, and decay.

"The garbage is corrupting it," he stated aloud, perhaps in reply to the voice. "Over time, the whole ocean will be affected."  
_  
_The voice chuckled. _You catch on fast. So what are you going to do with it all?_

He went silent for a bit, studying the waters, then the horizon, before slowly turning to look at the garbage.

"Too much to throw away," he muttered. "I'm sure if we just...found a use for everything..._ made_ use of everything...it wouldn't be like this."

More laughter. It wasn't evil or mocking – it seemed genuinely amused by his answer.

_You want to recycle it all?_

"Maybe. Or maybe I just need to show people its beauty."

Silence.

_You know, kiddo, you have one heck of an imagination. Don't change._

He woke up.

The alarm buzzer had been going off for fifteen minutes.

"Damnit."

~*~

As always, his parents weren't around. The apartment was empty, though the television was blaring and the radio in the kitchen was on, playing nothing but static. Once again he didn't shower – fourth day straight. He didn't have time. He knew he stunk, but...well, he'd just have to deal. Opening the fridge, he frowned, shoulders slumping in disappointment. They didn't even leave him any breakfast – just a two-week old open carton of milk.

He went to school hungry again.

He really only went to school for math. Everything else, he was failing. Badly. Mainly it was due to attendance, though Literature was a different story – even when he actually _tried_ to do well in a literature class, he'd crash and burn _hard._ Dyslexia didn't help much. He stopped caring though, after...what, eighth grade? Who cares. All he needed was math.

Besides...school wasn't a very hospitable environment.

_...12 times. _He made his way through to the back of the school, having taken a few back alley shortcuts to get to the basketball courts. _Somehow, I'll end up in the garbage at least twelve times today. Shoved into a locker...three times. And provided no one's in the bathroom, there's only a 30% chance I'll get a swirly. _Climbing over the chain-link fence, he headed towards one corner of the school, where an open window could lead him straight into a boy's bathroom – easiest way to get in late without getting caught.

And to his great fortune, there was no one currently in that bathroom. Slipping through the window, he snuck out and checked the hall, first looking for the clock. Honors Calculus wasn't going to be for another hour, so he had every intention of just staying in the stall furthest from the door and fiddling with his TI-89 until then.

Instead, he fell asleep.

~*~

Same sounds. Same seagulls crying from above, same waves crashing in the distance.

Same stench. The stench of decay, of things once loved now neglected, of rot and rubber and rust and the briny, moldy, salty scent of the nearby ocean. It should have been a refreshing scent compared to what was surrounding him, but the other scents were too overpowering. His eyes stung from it.

Despite the pain, he opened them.

The sky was still gray just above him, but it was darker, no longer illuminated by a midday sun. He sat up and looked for a source of light, finding it towards the south once more – towards the ocean, the only thing the garbage did not obscure. The southern sky was a brilliant crimson that brightened to an orange where the sun met the water.

He frowned. Why was the sun setting in the south..?

_Don't worry. The sun will be back tomorrow._

There seemed to be more trash than there was before; it took longer for him to reach the ocean, and when he did, he was still wading through trash. It slowly and steadily fell into the waters, moved by some unseen, unfelt force. The smell was worse than before, too; while it was easier to breathe at the shore, it was impossible to ignore such a strong odor of filth. He turned, eyes following the junk mountains skywards. Black smoke rose from somewhere far away, filling the skies without direction or design, without winds to guide it. The air was stagnant here. Every breath was stillborn.

_Amazing how much people throw away, isn't it? The second they get tired of something..._

He looked for his reflection in the water and saw the same lion, distorted by small, short waves. Something was different about it, though. Looking closer, he noticed two small round bumps on its head that weren't there before. Fascinated, and perhaps without really thinking, he reached out to touch them, as if he could actually feel them.

He felt bone.

"What the factor–?!" Drawing his hand away with a sharp gasp, he stared down with widened eyes – and there was nothing. Nothing but water and the distorted image of the lion staring back at him, looking equally afraid.

He heard laughter.

"_What the factor?" Never heard that one before._

Feeling his fingers slick with something a little thicker than water, he lifted his amber eyes to glance at his hand. Another stagnant breath caught in his throat as fear struck him anew: blood. His hand was covered in blood. But it didn't smell like blood. Blinking in confusion, he brought it closer to his nose and breathed in a little deeper – and immediately began to cough.

Oil.

Lifting his hand, he tilted it away from the light and saw that what he mistook for a dark red was just pitch black reflecting the red skies. He dipped it in the waters again, intending to wash it off, and paused when he felt the cool liquid against his skin. He was reaching into the lion's mouth – it was black now. All of it. It was an ocean of oil.

_Black gold. _The words sounded just as slick as that which they described, especially in that voice. _For something so valuable, it's pretty disgusting, huh? Corrupts everything it touches._

He drew his hand from the polluted waters and lifted it up, watching the inky blackness roll down his arm. The way the tendrils of oil branched out as the droplets fell...it was almost reminiscent of a flame. Black flames consuming him, starting from his left arm.

_Now you tell me..._

All of a sudden it felt like there was someone there, someone directly in front of him, kneeling with him – but he glanced up and saw no one, nothing – nothing but the sunset before him and the ocean of oil – and then he felt something grasp his blackened hand, as tangible as flesh and bone. Instinctively he jolted away, but the grip held despite the slickness, unyielding. Its strength wasn't human. Instinctively, he looked up to where a person's eyes might be.

_...what you're going to do with it all._

He was trembling, trembling with fear, with absolute terror, and he shouldn't have been able to speak – but he spoke without thinking, two words spilling from his lips before he could take them back.

"Burn it."

Silence.

The air grew heavy, and his chest tightened. He was looking at nothing, but he felt for all the world he was looking into the eyes of _someone._ Someone very disappointed.

_...As you wish._

And then his arm lit up with pain – searing, burning, as if he were on fire – and when his eyes shifted from the invisible figure to his arm, he realized that was exactly what was happening. The burning spread to his throat as he screamed, straining his vocal cords, and he began to thrash, twisting and writhing to try and escape the heat. The invisible force lifted, and the next thrash freed him–

–he touched the water on his way down–

–and just like that, the sea of oil became a sea of flames...

"No–!"

He bolted upright, eyes snapping wide open.

He was awake. The heat he felt a moment ago was replaced by the feeling of cold sweat, but he was sure he still felt the stinging pain in his left arm. But it was all a buzzing, distant sensation; his thoughts were more focused on discerning where he was, what had just happened, and...

The bell rang.

He let out a slow, silent breath, never more relieved to see the chipped green paint of the stall walls. His beloved TI-89 laid at his feet, screen blank. Everything was normal. Everything was as it should have been.

"Just a dream," he whispered, reaching up to wipe the sweat from his face.

He froze, staring at his arm.

It was completely burned.


	2. Save Me From Hell

A/N: Thank you, everyone who reviewed! Your feedback is greatly appreciated. And thank you to those who favorited/watched this as well -- even if you don't say anything, just the fact that you took the slightest interest in this makes me happy. I hope I don't let you down.

~*~

The walk home was brisk but aimless. In fact, it wasn't really towards home at all.

He'd do this on occasion, walking through the crowded streets of Shibuya without so much as a thought as to where he was going. He could slip in and out of the crowds easily enough, as no one ever really noticed him moving past. He had a tendency to go unnoticed by most people, including his parents. So why not take the scenic route now and then?

Most people wouldn't consider Shibuya's backalleys to be scenic, though, unless they knew where to look. Sure, everyone knew where the biggest graffiti hot spots were -- those big brick and mortar canvases that stood out in broad daylight, turning the head of every art-savvy passerby. Udagawa's back streets were full of them. But art didn't always crop up where one expected to see it.

Sometimes, it took a little searching for.

He was a hunter. He wasn't after the big game that everyone else was hunting; it was actually the smallest of finds that would suffice -- _more_ than suffice -- and temporarily sate his hunger. The huge murals of Udagawa were wonderful enough to stare at for days on end, but...what about all the little things that weren't good enough to show to the world?

What about the rejects?

Those were the ones he was looking for. Little pieces of art in the alleyways no one visited. He didn't link them to CAT, at first -- just thought they were someone else's little spurt of inspiration coming out and then fleeing the moment that image was done. But over time, he'd realized that in all of CAT's works, there was a certain method he used -- he couldn't quite describe it, but there were very strict patterns that CAT adhered to, and once he noticed them elsewhere...well, it as as simple as adding two and two together.

Maybe that was exactly what they were: spurts of inspiration that just couldn't wait to get to the big murals. Or maybe they were just practice images. Prototypes. Maybe they were just...rejected.

Whatever they were, stumbling upon them always brightened his day at least marginally. Little cats and cat faces doing inane and silly things, sometimes painted around or interacting with flaws in the canvas. What used to be a simple crack or water stain was somehow incorporated into the graffiti in some witty way or another -- simple, intuitive things that made Sho laugh when he saw them. After running into a couple on his way to Udagawa, he began to seek out the little ones specifically.

Or maybe the little ones began to seek him.

It was odd; after he'd started to look -- _seriously_ look -- they started cropping up everywhere. They began to appear on the signs by his bus stop. By the hole-in-the-wall burger place he'd frequent whenever he could scrounge up five hundred yen. If he sat on a particular bench one day, he'd find a sassy-looking catface there the next. Every time he found a new shortcut to somewhere -- anywhere -- they would be there. As if he were being followed. He just chalked it up to good fortune and coincidence.

It was under these circumstances that he had a good reason to be sitting in a concrete storm drain, staring at the water-stained wall in awe.

Every inch of the wall was covered in cats.

Cat faces that expressed every sort of emotion available to humank-- err, catkind, and some that didn't. Some of them looked absolutely silly and existed for no other reason than to cause laughter. Aside from the disembodied cat faces, there were cats and kittens of various shapes and sizes _everywhere,_ doing any number of activities from sleeping to skydiving to fishing to engaging in paintball to making love with teddy bears to rocking out on an electric guitar. The ones closest to the water stains made good use of them -- swimming, kayaking, surfing, scuba diving...just being cute.

Sho stayed in that storm drain for six and a half hours. He counted every single one of those cats, over and over and over again.

3141.

This had to be some kind of sign. It couldn't possibly be anything else. He counted them again. And again. And again. And again.

He fell asleep.

~*~

Amber eyes opened to find a world of grey. A thick, dark fog had descended upon the whole area, making it impossible to see farther than six feet in any direction. Shadowy colossi surrounded him; the towering junkheaps seemed to have lengthened in both height and width, stretching ever closer to infinity.

Somewhere above him was the sun, invisible. Gulls no longer cried above. He could not tell where the sea was, or if it still existed at all.

He waited.

"...Hello?"

His lungs filled with the smog, instantly beginning to burn. He coughed and choked, forced to bring his shirt collar up around his nose and mouth just to breathe, and even then he couldn't help but cough. His eyes stung, tearing up.

_The consequences of my decision._

The voice was gone.

"Hey!" he called, only to break off into another bout of coughing. Squeezing his eyes shut, he knelt and lowered himself to the ground to escape the smoke, only to cry out in alarm when his hand touched the ground. It was hot -- _burning_ hot -- as if the very earth were on fire. Opening his eyes, he realized that was pretty much the case: the smoke was erupting from the soil, and tiny embers flicked up beneath his hands.

The world was burning.

He was blind and deaf, his sense of touch eroded by heat, and his nose and mouth felt scorched. He couldn't breathe. He was going to die. Gasping against his sleeve, he began to panic, watery eyes seeking a way out. _Got to escape. Got to get higher. Got to rise above--_

Reaching out blindly, he yelped as his fingers groped hot iron, only barely perceiving the metal yield to his touch. Burning. Melting. Scalding. He winced at the hiss of his flesh against what was essentially a hot skillet, but braced his weight on it anyway, heaving himself up and reaching for the next ledge. Smoke rises -- pretty much all vapors do -- but with the source of the smoke being the earth itself, and no visible escape route in any ground-level direction, the only place left to go was up.

Adrenaline numbing most of the pain, he climbed onwards, enduring the agony of red-hot metal and sharp, rusted edges. Every step was frantic, neglecting caution, multiple times resulting in his grabbing or climbing onto some unstable ledge and sliding a few feet back down towards earth. But the thought of giving up didn't cross his mind; he kept climbing. _Do or die._

_**"Hey!"**_ he yelled again, scalded voice coming out with some difficulty. It felt like he'd swallowed a ton of gravel, and he couldn't stand the feeling of his mouth being so dry -- but the smoke didn't assault his lungs as viciously this time. It wasn't quite as thick up higher, it seemed. Progress.

Progress, but no one answered. He kept climbing.

Twenty feet. Thirty. Forty. Fifty. Sixty. Up, up, up. A hundred feet upwards, and still no voice, still no sun; only the smoke and the amorphous silhouettes of mountains around him. He could die if he fell. One slip would be all it'd take. Better than asphyxiation or burning alive, but...

"Where are you?" he gasped between coughs. No answer.

"Say something!"

No answer.

He kept climbing.

_Can't he hear me?_ Sho wondered, panic rising. _I need to be louder._

"Answer me!"

But his voice failed him, coming out softer and more strained than before, almost beginning to sound like steam escaping a kettle. _Need to be louder. He has to hear me. He __**has**__ to_.

"Don't leave me!" Little more than a wheeze by now. "I take it back!"

_Why can't he hear me?_

He'd always been afraid to speak up. Now he was terrified of not being heard. No matter how hard he tried to yell, his voice failed him, over and over again, growing quieter, quieter, sounding less and less human -- and when one is facing death, when one is helpless and hanging just on the brink, the worst possible thing is no one to hear their cry for help.

Louder.

"Please--!"

A whisper.

_What's with all the racket, kiddo?_

Sho's breath caught in his throat, eyes tearing up for a different reason. Relief washed over him like a cold rain, a welcome escape from the heat.

"Thank Euler," he breathed more than said, resting on his elbows. "I was so afraid..."

_What for? I thought this was what you wanted._

The voice held an unusual lilt, almost cruel. Something about it reminded him of a betrayed lover.

"I was wrong."

_Oh?_

It left off there, waiting -- no, demanding -- for Sho to continue. The boy hesitated, more because he had to fight for oxygen than out of contrariness, and he took a moment to try and pull himself onto a stable ledge. His muscles burned long after he'd escaped the heat, and he felt his arms beginning to give out on him -- but the pain was forgotten the moment he reached up, charred fingers brushing against something _soft--_

_Mighty noble of you to admit your mistake_, the voice drawled, and for some reason it seemed closer. Sho looked up to see what he was touching, his mind already classifying it as fabric before he knew what it was, and when he realized it was _solid--_

Pants.

Legs.

Someone.

He saw nothing, but felt the warmth of something living. More than that, he felt a very, very cold gaze.

_But I can't help but wonder..._

He heard the slight rustling of fabric, as if someone were moving, bending forwards--he felt something tangible grasp his chin, forcing him to look up--

"If you're lying."

Sho felt as if he could die right then and there.

The way the voice had said it gave him the impression that not only was death imminent, but that he completely and utterly deserved it. There was nothing. He was looking at nothing. It didn't make sense -- why? What'd he done that was so wrong?

"I..!" Fear strangled Sho's voice trying to keep the words from coming out. His instinct was to deny it, to insist that he didn't want the world to burn, that he never even meant to _imply--_

"I don't..."

But..._was_ he lying?

"I don't want to burn."

Silence overtook them both, as if the voice was waiting for him to say, 'the world.' But those words never came. _I_ don't want to burn, he'd said, and that much was truth. The voice finally gave a soft, low chuckle, and Sho felt the pressure on his chin loosen completely.

"Who does?" it said simply, and the rustling of fabric indicated he was pulling away. Sho resisted the urge to reach for the figure in favor of keeping his grip on the ledge, short nails digging into what felt like granite. That fear of being abandoned briefly returned, and he doubled his efforts to scramble up, only to realize that there wasn't anything more than a few inches to scramble onto. He'd either have to reach up blindly, or--

"Look at you," the voice said with a hint of amusement. "Hanging on by sheer force of will. Gotta admire that determination."

Sho _really_ wished he hadn't just been reminded of his own fatigue, but moreso, he wished he could think of how to respond.

"I'm...sorry," he said lamely. The figure shifted in response, but Sho couldn't figure out whether it was shrugging, shaking its head, or what.

"Everyone makes mistakes. And wanting the world to burn isn't anything new." It paused thoughtfully. "Only the result of many, many mistakes. By many, many people."

Guilt tainted the relief he felt upon hearing that, and again he was speechless. The last thing he wanted to do -- aside from dying, of course -- was to irritate this faceless deity, to disappoint him like he'd done last time. He wanted to gain more than just his passing attention; he wanted acceptance. But how could he possibly--

"Why are you climbing?"

Sho glanced up at nothing, making a questioning sound in the back of his throat. A shift, and he perceived something moving just over his head -- he imagined an arm or hand gesturing outwards.

"Lake of fire below you, heaven above."

He stared, uncertain if the deity was looking at him or not.

"Are you climbing to escape Hell, or are you climbing to reach Heaven? 'Zit out of fear, or out of the will to get higher?"

He stayed quiet, considering. He licked his lips, dry tongue offering no moisture, and thought to speak; instead he waited for the voice to continue, just in case it was rhetorical. The long silence afterwards made him realize it wasn't, and his mind frantically began searching for the right answer. The voice, understanding his indecision, chuckled again, effectively resetting Sho's will to speak.

"Both fear and desire can consume you, you know."

_An inverse matrix._ He should've known.

"But you're just a cub. What are you even doing here?"

Sho thought long and hard.

"...Climbing."

The voice laughed more pleasantly this time, and he could almost imagine the grin that came with it.

"Why?"

"...I don't want to get burned."

Silence. Sho tensed, feeling his heart sink. Did he say the wrong thing again?

"Do you know what lions do to their cubs?"

Sho, taken aback by the tangentiality of the question and having only seen lions in coloring books, hesitantly shook his head.

"In Japanese legends," the voice continued, "the lion takes its cubs to the edge of a high cliff. One by one, he throws them off, and waits to see which ones climb back up."

An intense chill overcame Sho as fear froze the blood in his veins, branching out into his chest and stomach. He could feel that interrogating gaze being directed at him once more, and his heart thundered ever faster.

"The ones that make it are accepted as his children, and they become the perfect beast. The ones that don't, he leaves to die." The voice got louder, closer. "Only the strong survive."

Gravity's pull suddenly doubled as a tangible force grabbed both his wrists, lifting him up, and it was that force alone that kept him from falling.

"Do you want to be a legend?"

Time stopped.

It let go.


End file.
